The promise is familiar. Fifteen minutes a day, a few simple exercises and a body transformed into a six-pack-ready physique. But real calisthenics can look considerably more extreme. In an Abu Dhabi gym, athletes launch themselves over bars, hold their bodies horizontal in the air and perform weighted muscle-ups — skills that can take months or years of progressive training to master.
For those who train it competitively, calisthenics is far removed from a quick beach workout of push-ups and squats. The discipline has its roots in bodyweight training and street workouts, but its more advanced forms demand strength, body control, flexibility, coordination and patience.
The sport begins with basic movements and gradually prepares the body for increasingly difficult skills, said Georgi Petkov, an Abu Dhabi-based calisthenics world champion and trainer who has been practising the discipline for about 13 years and coaching for around a decade.
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“The more you have reps and repetitions with the basics, the more your body is ready to learn a new skill,” he said.
At the advanced end, athletes work towards movements such as the planche and front lever, where the body is held horizontally using upper-body strength and core control.
Similarly, international champion and coach Charbel Khoury said athletes can spend six months to a year building the strength needed for some of these skills, although progress varies between individuals.
The planche, for example, requires the shoulders and core to support the body while it is held out horizontally, while the front lever places heavy demands on the core and lats.
A muscle-up adds an explosive element: the athlete must pull themselves high enough over a bar to transition from a pull-up into a push.
Khoury, who began training in Lebanon in 2013 at the age of 13, remembers being able to do only two or three pull-ups when he started. He went on to compete nationally and internationally and said he won the Lebanese national championship every year from 2014 through 2024-25.
His progression illustrates the gap between basic bodyweight exercise and competitive calisthenics.
“There is a lot more to calisthenics than just doing a push-up,” he said, pointing to the skills, progression and community that develop around the sport.
From a handful of athletes to a community
That community element is becoming increasingly visible in Abu Dhabi, where local athletes range from newcomers still building their first skills to competitors training for championships.
Khaled Al Jaberi, founder of Muscle Up Fitness, said that when he became interested in calisthenics around 2018, he struggled to find a gym in Abu Dhabi dedicated specifically to the discipline.
He eventually began working towards creating one, with the gym officially opening in October 2022.
At the time, he said, the local calisthenics community was small enough that its members could almost be counted on fingers.
The gym subsequently organised competitions, challenges, free gatherings in Abu Dhabi parks and workshops as part of an effort to bring more people into the sport.
The aim was not simply to train advanced athletes, but to give beginners a route into a discipline that can initially look intimidating.
Jaberi said the gym developed classes for different levels, taking people from basic variations of movements through intermediate and advanced skills.
That progression can be seen among the athletes themselves.
Meanwhile, Abdulla Al Hosani, a member of the local community, came to calisthenics from a background in running. He said repeated running injuries, including problems affecting his shoulder and lower back, prompted him to look for a way to strengthen his upper body.
After taking up calisthenics, he said his shoulder and back pain improved as he developed greater upper-body and core strength. He now combines the two disciplines, training calisthenics several times a week alongside running, and has moved into competition.
At one Muscle Up Battle, he said he placed fourth in his first appearance.
For younger athletes, meanwhile, the sport can offer a progression that goes far beyond conventional gym exercises.
Zayed Al Salami, a newer member of the calisthenics community, is already working towards movements such as the front lever. The gym community also includes younger athletes who are progressing into handstands and other advanced skills while still at school.
That range of ages and abilities is part of what gives the sport its community feel: athletes can be working towards completely different goals while training around the same bars.
For Petkov, the accessibility of calisthenics is part of its appeal. He began training outdoors, using whatever was available, including park equipment and even walls to perform dips.
“You don’t specifically need a place or special equipment,” he said. “You just need creativity, imagination and knowledge.”
Anastasiia Starovoitova, international champion and trainer, who began from scratch after encountering calisthenics during a trip to Ibiza, similarly said one of its attractions is being able to train using your own body almost anywhere.
She later competed in France and at European and world level, eventually winning a world championship in Bulgaria in 2025.
But while the sport can be practised almost anywhere, mastering its most difficult movements is anything but easy.
Khoury describes the muscle-up as an explosive pull followed by a push to get the body over the bar. The full planche is among the hardest skills he has worked towards.
Starovoitova said one of the attractions of calisthenics is that there is no obvious final destination. “You did 10 pull ups, then you want to do a muscle-up. You manage a muscle-up, next you want to do weighted muscle-up, then you challenge yourself to more weights, more reps — it’s never ending.”
“That’s the cool thing about it: there’s always something new to take on.”
What about those ’15-day’ transformations?
That is where the word calisthenics becomes blurred online.
Social-media advertisements increasingly use the term to market short bodyweight programmes, often showing dramatic before-and-after images and promising a radically transformed physique in a matter of days.
Petkov said people should be sceptical of the idea that a short programme can produce an extreme physical transformation.
“If you’re 100 kilos with a body fat of 40 per cent, it’s impossible to become someone who’s with 6 per cent fat and super shredded” in 15 days, he said.
But he also makes an important distinction: the exercise itself can still be beneficial.
Even if a programme is marketed as “military calisthenics” or another variation, someone who begins exercising consistently is likely to improve their fitness, he said.
‘Military calisthenics’ vs competitive calisthenics
The term “military calisthenics” is also not necessarily describing the same thing as competitive calisthenics.
Petkov said bodyweight exercises such as pull-ups, push-ups, dips, monkey bars and even muscle-ups have historically been used in military and physical training, particularly where agility, speed and strength were required.
Competitive calisthenics, however, takes those foundations into a much more specialised realm, where athletes train for specific skills, controlled static holds, explosive movements, weighted exercises and, depending on the discipline, freestyle combinations.
The distinction is also reflected in the way the Abu Dhabi community has grown. What may begin as a few push-ups, dips or pull-ups can become a structured progression towards movements that require years of practice.
The difference is visible when an athlete moves from a basic pull-up to a clean muscle-up, or from a conventional plank to holding their entire body horizontally above the ground.
And behind those viral-looking moments is usually a long period of repetitive training.
Petkov said calisthenics also teaches athletes to appreciate that progression. “If you want to achieve a certain skill, it basically takes time. It teaches you patience.”
That patience is also what keeps many athletes training long after they have mastered their first impressive movement.
Starovoitova said she likes the fact that athletes can continually set new challenges for themselves, while Khoury has spent more than a decade moving between freestyle, static skills, weighted calisthenics and endurance.
For newcomers, the message from the athletes is therefore less glamorous than the social-media promise: start with the basics, learn proper form and build progressively.
The spectacular muscle-ups and planches come later.
And for the athletes training in Abu Dhabi, that progression is increasingly becoming the point of the sport itself – not simply the way to a better-looking body, but a test of what the body can learn to do.
Source: Khaleej Times